Tech Snack: Gmail Power User

This week's After School Tech Snack topic is Gmail Power User. We covered the basics of using Gmail a few weeks ago, this workshop focused on some more of the advanced features and tools: Search, Labels, Filters, Labs, and Stars.

Search: At the top of the Gmail screen is a search box. From this location you can search through all messages, even those marked as deleted. Search by included or excluded keyword, email addresses or people, label, star, date, or whether or not there is an attachment. For more, see Google support page: About Gmail search.

Labels: Inboxes have a tendency to become quickly cluttered. Labels can help organize those messages. Messages can have 1 or more labels, depending on your method of organization. For each label a link appears in the left navigation, making it very easy to jump to messages related to people, projects, or topics, depending on the labels you use. For more, see Google support page: Using labels.

Filters: While you can manually label each message, or groups of messages, it may be more practical to have Gmail filter all incoming mail based on a specific set of parameters. This can ensure that messages from certain people or on important topics are not lost in the Inbox. This can also help move less important messages out of the Inbox and into a special folder (label). For more, see Google support page: Using filters.

Labs: Google's collection of experiment features can be found on the Labs tab of Gmail settings. My personal favorite is Undo Send, but there are other options that may make Gmail work better for you.
For more, see Google support page: Labs.

Stars: A very simple way to make sure important messages are noticed. By adjusting the Stars setting, users can increase the star colors and shapes to 4 or 12. For more, see Google support page: Starred messages.

GTSD staff are invited to contact Mrs. Bond with any questions or difficulties with Gmail or other Google Apps.